


Scraping at your skull, searching for a sickness

by Baryshnikov



Series: Where Monsters lie [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark Harry Potter, Hallucinations, M/M, Minor Violence, Obsession, POV Second Person, Parasites, Sentient Horcrux, if that's a thing or even if it isn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 19:26:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16793269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Tom is scratching in your skull and begging you to let him out





	Scraping at your skull, searching for a sickness

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry if the tenses are a bit muddled.

You’re not sure when he first arrived. Though you remember he was always there, just lurking in the dark of your subconscious, but you didn’t have a name for him. You were too young to know what he was, and even his malice did not extend to that which couldn’t understand him. You did not know what he was, but you could feel him, like a second heartbeat just out of sync. He waited, just below the surface, knowing that soon he could strike you, you knew too, in the pit of your heart that he was waiting. So were you. He was that thing you could never reach, deep inside you, aching. You tried once, alone in the dark, nothing but a pair of scissors in your hand. You wanted to get him out of you, you wanted that endless ache to go away, and for him to leave you. But no matter how deep you gouged, you couldn’t get him out. He was still there, lurking, scratching the walls of your mind ceaselessly, itching to escape. He was an incessant drone, a whine that never left you, even when you were crying under your bed, blood sliding down the scissors and holes in your stomach, he was there smiling in the back of your brain. 

You’re not sure when he first arrived. Though you remember when his voice first echoed through your head and his hands started to tug at your heart. He didn’t sound like you. His voice was deeper, older and colder, it froze your thoughts whenever he spoke. He knew what to say to you, and how to say it. He knew how to make the worst things in the world sound like dreams that faceless authorities were excluding you from. He knew how to make monsters out of friends, and how to fashion angels from the dark. He knew how to push the limits so slowly that you hardly noticed when started thinking _his_ thoughts and dreaming _his_ dreams. You should have hated what he did to you, but he’d been there so long now, like a fungus spreading through you. But that implied there was something natural about him, that nature smiled upon his heart. It didn’t. He did not appreciate the beauty of the world and whenever he spoke the landscapes before your eyes turned to ash. He was the promised pestilence, a disease that delighted in wrapping itself around your brain and soaking up the joy, replacing it with a contagion of which only he knew the name. So with every word he whispered you gave in a little more, let him have another slice of your heart, always served with your trembling fingers tracing the scars, and wet stripes on your cheeks. He soothed you in those moments, and you were more confused than ever whether you wanted him in your head anymore. 

You’re not sure when he first arrived. Though you remember the first time he spilled into reality. At first, he was a blur, a cloud that smiled and stared, but nothing more. Then it had changed. Features solidified into something recognisable, something like you. He smiled back at you in the mirror and you knew something was wrong. You should have been scared, but you knew him, he’d been there since the beginning, so, you did nothing when his fingers stretched the glass. You did nothing when the mirror shattered. You did nothing when a handsome outline, crudely coloured with a thousand shades of grey, stood before you. You were in awe of what your doppelganger looked like, so you did not care that he scraped his nails down your neck, a wicked red smile slashed across his face. He was a monster that knew how to look so pretty, and you did so love to look at him. Almost as much as he liked to watch you, studying, learning, absorbing everything about you. Every idiosyncrasy was carefully catalogued behind his eyes, and he looked more predatory than ever. He stalked you. Eyes glazed red and teeth a little too white. You were and are nothing more than fawn in his eyes, naïve and unsophisticated, so weak and so innocent. Despite that voracious gaze, his stares still made your heart pound, they reminded you that you were and still are prey, and you are starting to love it. 

You’re not sure when he first arrived. Though you remember realising that he didn’t actually exist. You were lying in bed, lethargic, unwilling, he was standing in front of the door, so you dared not leave. You gave him a name when he walked into your world. Tom. You don’t why you chose that name, it just seemed to suit him, apparently, it meant twin in some ancient language, and you are twins really. His heart is your heart and they always beat together. Tom will only die when you do, but you cannot bear to kill what you love. So you watch each other endlessly. His eyes were so cold that you could feel your fingers freezing as you look. You liked to imagine you were burning holes in his eyeballs, melting his red mouth until it slid down his throat. But in his gaze, you always feel like a child, no matter how old you are, Tom is older. Tom is older than time itself, you can see it when he smiles, he is not of this age; he is from a time that is older and darker and nastier. But he is a master of time, and has his fingers wrapped around every stopwatch, and smirks when he plays, like a child who mimics god. But Tom is not a child, he is far crueller than a child could ever be. Tom is a snake, slithering around you and squeezing, trying to break you, trying to crack that last shell open and dip his fingers into the reward. You would love to do the same, but Tom’s heart is bare, and he has poured all his demons into the world, like a pandora’s box to which you thought only you held a key. Watching each other, you hate what he does to you, hate that you want something that only he has, hate that you would tear him apart to get it. But the thing you hate the most is that as much as you appeal to greater power, Tom is not real. He is not standing across the room. He is still inside you, still scratching, still shredding your sanity; wrenching you apart stitch by stitch. 

You’re not sure when he first arrived. Though it doesn’t bother you anymore. Tom is as much a part of you, as you are of him. Neither of you are anything without each other, and after all these years you are finally appreciating what he does to you. How his smiles make you feel alive and his words bleed effortlessly into yours. There was a divide once, but the chasm has closed, and you are merging into each other, melting together: his eyes in your sockets, his red mouth slashed across your face. You love it. Love seeing him fused to you. The two of you rotting together in this righteous world. You absolutely love it. So, when dark words spill from your mouth, his words, you don’t care. A sliver of your old self knows that you should. Knows that Tom is nothing more than a symbiote filled with endless excuses to calm your ragged mind. Knows that Tom will one day abandon you for something younger and fresher and more exceptional. But you do not think of that. You only care for the throb in your bones and ache in your stomach and for the fleeting bliss his parasitic love provides. 

You’re not sure when Tom first arrived but now you cannot bear to let him go.


End file.
